Free-roaming, in a restricted retro kind of way, and with plenty of brainwork required to figure out how to escape the maze-like levels, I can see why it holds a place in the hearts of those who played it as kids, but the rather poor design of the platforming stages ultimately makes it more of a slog than it should be.

To add insult to injury, there are also an abundance of graphical glitches and slowdown which further hampers the enjoyment factor. To make matters worse, the game's score is devoid of any recognizable TMNT tunes, including the main theme. This is a travesty, to say the least. The sound effects are all right, but by no means compensate for the lack of TMNT inspired sounds and music.
Thankfully some of the sequels on the NES are generally better than this. Don't let childhood nostalgia blind you to the flaws this game has. By all means if you have fond memories of this from when you were a kid download it, but don't say we didn't warn you!

Conceptually speaking, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles for the Nintendo Entertainment System isn't all that different from Contra, Castlevania, or any of Konami's other 8-bit action games. In fact, a good portion of the sound effects and music in TMNT were lifted directly from Contra. For each of the game's five chapters, you wander around a top-view map, figuring out which doors and manholes connect to the areas you need to clear. Then you jump and hack your way through the enemies in those side-scrolling areas using the turtles at your disposal. You only control one turtle at a time, but you can swap them from the pause menu, which effectively gives you four lives to get through each chapter. Unfortunately, unlike Contra or Castlevania, the team that put TMNT together did a sloppy job. The stages aren't so much challenging as they are unfair, the action feels unpolished, and the game as a whole doesn't make good use of the TMNT license.